How long will it take before we can't have one?

How long will it be before the only cultural touchstone is television? (Think of the depth of discourse! What are the Budweiser commercials really trying to say?)

If the idea is to provide untrammelled diversity in curriculum, who's to say that one form of, oh, English grammar is to remain the standard in all the schools of the nation?

If a fundamentalist Christian school can forbid the teaching of evolution in its science classrooms, can one say that the children there have been kept unfairly ignorant of science? Is it OK to falsify one discipline to satisfy the school's driving philosophy?

If a private school in Oakland wishes to conduct all its classes in Ebonic English, what happens when those children apply to colleges? Are they classified as non-English speakers, or as uneducated? Will there be a standard SAT or other college board exam, or must there be one developed for each new splinter group?

Is it OK to use taxpayer money to underwrite either of these examples?

The cream will rise to the top? I wonder if that's true, or if we will just see the rise of a class structure built on the school network your child attended. We already see a little of that now, but at least there is something approaching a common culture that allows the Admissions Departments of CalTech, Harvard, Baylor, the University of Chicago, and so forth, to judge applicants on how they compare to the whole community, rather than how their K12 curriculum compares to the K12 curricula of other applicants.

Will anyone oversee the Many Little Schools? If so, who will enforce the oversight? The states? The feds? Underwriters Laboratories? As a Catholic school graduate, I can attest to the fact that our school curriculums had to meet the standards not only of the diocese but of the NY State Board of Regents. The result was something resembling a common culture: common context with varying viewpoints.

What regulations will the Many Little Schools have to adhere to to receive voucher monies? Must they comply with ADA regs, or can they post a "No Cripples" sign outside at the foot of the staircases? Will parents who earn $25,000/year be able to afford to send their children to the school of their choice even with vouchers?

Who will set the academic standards? All those academically qualified Communist vultures who (if one listens to Fox News) apparently dominate the universities? Career civil servants from the Department of Defense? The Rupert Murdoch-Ted Turner-Bill & Melinda Gates Educational Foundation? Bill Bennett's k12.com organization? We don't have an Académie Française in this country -- thank God -- let alone a national clearinghouse for required curriculum. Is the Department of Education to become that?

If it were adults making decisions for themselves, it would be different. But these are children, whose education will affect their entire futures, not to mention the future of the country. If America is to live up to its promise of equal opportunity, each child must have access to a minimum level of educational quality. If there is to be a dramatic change in the way education is delivered to the young, who depend on older heads to look out for them, the least we can do is to attempt to make the product include an RDA of the basic disciplines that allow us to have a civic discourse not reminiscent of the one at the foot of Babel.

Regards--
Mary Anne